Puerto Rico votes to become the 51st US state

Roberto Maldonado, 75, sells flags at a New Progressive Party rally where Mitt Romney was campaigning Friday on the North Side of the Capitol building in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Christopher Gregory/AFP/Getty Images)

Roberto Maldonado, 75, sells flags at a New Progressive Party rally where Mitt Romney was campaigning Friday on the North Side of the Capitol building in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Christopher Gregory/AFP/Getty Images)

65 percent vote for statehood in first part of two-part referendum on a status change for the tropical territory.

Written by: Faine Greenwood

Posted Nov.7th, 2012

Amid all the hoopla, you might have missed it: in a referendum on Tuesday, Puerto Rico voted in favor of US statehood, in a move that might entail some dramatic changes in elementary school geography books.

It’s not yet clear if Puerto Rico will actually become a state. The US Congress would have to approve such a decision — although President Obama has said that he would respect a popular vote on the matter, according to the BBC.

And it would be a big decision, including new voting additions to the House of Representatives, and a struggle to figure out how to integrate Puerto Rico’s majority Spanish-speaking population with the largely English-speaking continental US.

1 COMMENT

We have Spanish speaking non citizens streaming into this country everyday with the "left" putting up signs in Spanish to accommodate them, and this house of idiots is worried that us citizens, Puerto Ricans are citizens, are going to assimilate with their language. This is the height of stupidity…………